Source: Samson Agonistes (1671), Lines 1687-1692 & 1697-1707
Context: But he, though blind of sight,
Despised, and thought extinguished quite,
With inward eyes illuminated,
His fiery virtue roused
From under ashes into sudden flame,
[... ]
So Virtue, given for lost,
Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,
Like that self-begotten bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
And lay erewhile a holocaust,
From out her ashy womb now teemed,
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deemed;
And, though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird, ages of lives.
“Was his very boyishness the reason he was chosen? In that case, was it not a virtue to be admired, and not a failing to be despised?”
Enchantment (1999)
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Orson Scott Card 586
American science fiction novelist 1951Related quotes
B 30
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)
“...there are more things to admire in men than to despise.”
The Plague (1947)
Source: 1930s, Education and the Social Order (1932), p. 107
Context: Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics. A great many young people lose faith in these dogmas at an age at which despair is easy, and thus have to face a much more intense unhappiness than that which falls to the lot of those who have never had a religious upbringing. Christianity offers reasons for not fearing death or the universe, and in so doing it fails to teach adequately the virtue of courage. The craving for religious faith being largely an outcome of fear, the advocates of faith tend to think that certain kinds of fear are not to be deprecated. In this, to my mind, they are gravely mistaken. To allow oneself to entertain pleasant beliefs as a means of avoiding fear is not to live in the best way. In so far as religion makes its appeal to fear, it is lowering to human dignity.
“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
Source: Wealth, War, and Wisdom
Source: A Tale of Time City (1987), pp. 78-79.
“Virtue is admirable, but boring.”
Fourth Realm Trilogy (2005-2009), The Traveler (2005)
1840s, Past and Present (1843)